


The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

by s4ffy



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bellamy Has Feelings, Bellarke Endgame, Eventual Smut, F/M, Inappropriately timed confessions, Minor Bellamy/Echo, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining, Post-Finale, Resentment, Reunion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 17:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4400273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s4ffy/pseuds/s4ffy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Two years and their friendship had twisted into something ugly and resentful. Two years and maybe now she was only just beginning to see that what she had gained in terms of inner peace and acceptance was worth less to her than the things she had failed to see right in front of her; the offer and promise of arms to hold her as she stumbled, hands to pull her back up again when she fell, lips to reassure her when she cried."</p><p>Two years after Clarke's departure, she returns. Her friends, Bellamy more than most, have not forgiven her for letting them think she was dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is very, very thin on bellarke, something which I promise will be made up for in the next and final chapter.

**Now**

It’s only been, what, like two years? And already the camp has changed beyond recognition. She can see in the distance actual wooden huts; tens of them. She swallows against the knot in her throat, the view in front of her a painful reminder that life without her continued like it always had – not that she’d expected any less.

The stares start the moment the lookout sees her from his vantage point by the gate. She meets his bemused gaze, holding it until she reaches the perimeter fence. At this point, more and more people have stopped and are staring at her. Most seem bewildered, at a loss of what to do.

“Open the gates!” the guard calls, and the gates creak and clank as they swing open. Clarke hesitates, only briefly – not enough for anyone to notice, and then steps through, into the Camp for the first time in over two years.

None of the faces are familiar to Clarke. Sure, she recognizes almost all of them, but none of them are the faces she’s been missing. The faces she wants to see again. Their confusion is off-putting to her, she swallows against her discomfort and scans the crowd, waiting for someone to step forward and break the strangely tense silence.

Harper emerges from a tent and promptly stops short.

“C-Clarke?” she falters and rubs her eyes.

“Hey, Harper.” Clarke smiles encouragingly, willing the strange behaviour to stop. “I know I’ve been gone a while,” she swallows guiltily, and means to press on but Harper’s face has gone red and she sputters.

“’Gone a while?’” she echoes incredulously. “’Gone a while!’” she repeats again, almost yelling it. Clarke swallows against the tightness in her throat; she had been expecting a cold, bitter reception, but she had never dreamed people would be so enraged.

“Clarke,” Harper’s mocking laugh rings out, “You were dead.” There’s a pregnant pause.

“What? Who told you that?” Clarke’s confusion is dizzying, her brain fogging up like condensation on a window. There’s movement to her left, and Raven appears at Harper’s side, her brown face leeched of colour.

“Oh, no one told us anything, Clarke. That’s the problem. No one told us a fucking thing, you bitch.” Raven spits almost venomously. “What did you expect us to think?” she demands. “It’s brutal out there, and you had nothing. There was no word, no message, you were gone and we thought you were dead.”

“I just…” Clarke’s voice trails off, her tongue unable to come up with any excuse. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…” The all too familiar sting of tears presses at the back of her eyes.

Raven sighs, and then softens visibly.

“I’m sorry,” she mutters. “God, this is screwed up. We thought you were gone, Clarke, we’ve all had to move on without you.” Icy fingers dig themselves into Clarke’s heart, sensing the simmering rage and pain that Raven, and surely the rest of her friends too, have buried.

Raven limps over to her, and searches her face, then pulls her into a tight hug.

“I hope you found what you were looking for.” She whispers into her hair. Looking over Raven’s shoulder, Clarke sees that Harper’s face is still guarded, but less so and Harper jerks her head over her shoulder.

“I suppose the Council will want to see you. Your mother’s this way.” Harper turns and leads the way, but Clarke hesitates for a moment, searching the crowd, who are pretending not to eavesdrop.

“Where is everyone?” she asks Raven. _Where is Bellamy?_ She means and Raven gives her a pitying look like she can see right into her soul and the longing that’s buried inside.

“Most people are at the new Village,” she pushes Clarke gently in the direction Harper disappeared in “Go. But you and I have some unfinished business to take care of.” The words are both a threat and a promise, and Clarke nods, acknowledging that Raven is not going to let the past rest, then turns, squaring her shoulders and steeling herself for the reunions to come.

::

::

::

 

  **Then**

 “You can’t be serious?” Bellamy’s enraged outburst punctures the tense silence. He looks around at the rest of the Council members, each of them meeting his gaze, except Abby. Abby’s hands are twisted together on the table top, and a frown is etched on her face.

Kane clears his throat.

“She’s been gone almost a year.” He pauses and swallows. “We haven’t heard from her, we haven’t heard _of_ her. Not one of the Grounders have seen any trace of her. If she – if she was…” he trails off and subtly glances at Abby. “If she was still alive, we would have heard something.” He continues, but his voice is gentler and kinder than before.

Bellamy shoots to his feet, arguments lined up on the tip of his tongue. But the fact that someone – finally – has said what most people were thinking has left him speechless.

Marcus, sensing his outrage, hurries on. “In any case, if she’s still alive, she’s not coming back, and we need that Council seat filled.”

Bellamy unconsciously glances at the empty seat beside him. The thought of representing the remainder of the Hundred with anyone but her is unthinkable.

“But they voted her in! She won this seat fair and square!” He glances at Abby, begging her with his eyes to back him up on this – if anyone would be in favour of keeping Clarke’s seat on the Council despite her absence, it would be Clarke’s own mother. She doesn’t meet his eyes.

“We can have another vote. Your people will have another representative, it’s still a democratic process.”

He sinks back down into his chair and massages his forehead. He’d known this day was coming, for a while now, and a little part of him is relieved that his won’t be the only voice of the Delinquents anymore. He’s tired of fighting all their battles singlehandedly, but giving up Clarke’s seat on the Council is like admitting defeat and accepting that, for one reason or another, she won’t be coming back. He’s not ready for that.

Abby finally looks up.

“Marcus is right. If she was still alive, we would have heard something by now. We’ve asked all over this region. No one’s seen her.” Bellamy feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Out of everyone in the camp, he’d expected that Clarke’s own mother would have fought the doubts of her survival the hardest. Recently, more and more people had begun to fear that Clarke was dead, but the fact that Abby seemed so insistent on her survival kept these doubts from becoming certainty – a mother always knows, wasn’t that what they all said?

He barely pays attention to the rest of the meeting, hearing only the angry buzz in his head. _Clarke is not dead, she can’t be. She’s still alive. She has to be._ He’s roused from his thoughts by Kane’s hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs it off and races to the fence.

The setting sun barely filters through the thick blanket of cloud. The trees look more like ominous silhouettes than actual foliage, and for the first time in almost year, Bellamy Blake welcomes the sharp sting of anger and hurt, instead of repressing it.

He hears footsteps behind him, crackling on the dry grass, but he stays hunched on the log, staring sullenly out at the forest.

Raven drops down next to him and elbows his arm.

“Why the long face?”

“They want to open up Clarke’s seat on the Council.” He pokes a stick into the dirt, scratching out meaningless lines and patterns in the dust. “Kane says she’s not coming back.”

Raven is silent for a long time.

“She’s been out there for a year, Bellamy. On her own, with no supplies or anything. This winter… Remember the hunting party?” she asks him.

He does remember, of course he does. Sixteen of the hardiest, strongest men went out to forage and hunt for a week, to try and supplement the dwindling supplies at camp. Only nine of them made it back from the harsh conditions.

“It’s been a whole year. If it wasn’t Clarke, I’d think she would have been dead after three months. I know you don’t want to believe it, none of us do… but…” She trails off and frowns, uncomfortable with the emotional subject. “She would know we’re worried. She would send a message to us, or something, at the very least.”

In his bones, Bellamy knows that what she says is the truth. In his heart, he refuses to accept that Clarke, all soft edges and steel centre, is lost, so easily and so soon. She had faced Grounders and epidemics, traps and radiation, all to fall in the face of a little bit of cold. His lips quirk into a humourless smile, and finally, he allows himself to feel the pain and betrayal he’d worked so hard to repress, all these months. She’d left him. To an extent, he understood why she needed to go. But, she didn’t come back. She’d left him to bear the weight of their monstrous act. To shoulder the responsibility of making sure that their self-made family pulled through this with as few casualties as possible. To remember the faces of the dead all by himself.

There is one emotion swirling inside his gut, and he recognizes its familiar, bitter tang. Resentment.

Because, how could he make it work when he was just one half of a unit? When she wasn’t there to steady his hot-headed impulsiveness? Who would temper his rash action with collected and logical thought? How were the forty-four going to get through this without her?

“Hey, don’t look like someone’s killed your puppy.” Raven elbows him again, but it’s softer than before. “You’ve made it this far without her to help. You’ll be fine on your own.”

The only reason he’d been able to do it for so long is because he’d always held on tightly to the hope that she’d be back eventually. He doesn’t go back into camp until the night is almost over. He stays on the log long after Wick collects Raven, and pretends that the wetness on his cheeks are not tears.

That night, when the dark, insidious whispers inside his mind quiet enough to let him sleep, he is haunted by a different nightmare; instead of the faces of all those people on the Ark who died because of his actions, all the Grounders he murdered to protect his people on the ground, all those children he sacrificed and families he destroyed in the Mountain to save his people, he sees Clarke instead; alone, helpless, dying. It’s the worst nightmare he’s ever had because of the uncertainty of it all. Dreaming about the past is different; what happened, happened and nothing he does will change the monster he used to be. But dreaming about Clarke is terrifying. Anything could have happened to her, and he will never know.

 

 

The lack of proper closure makes it difficult to really and truly let go, but Bellamy finds that channelling his grief into anger is the best way to keep the shreds of his heart together, so he lets his grief and loss evolve into something darker and more familiar - anger. Anger, that used to fuel him all those long years in the Ark, watching his sister grow up under the floor, scraping together enough food to avoid starvation while the upper class filled their bellies every night. Anger against the Council after they ripped away everything from him, leaving him a cold, lifeless apartment, a degrading demotion and the thundering mantra running through his head day in, day out: _you failed, you failed, you failed to protect her, you failed._ Anger is good, anger is something he knows how to deal with.

Monty is voted in to fill Clarke’s old seat (the one she never even sat in), and Bellamy does fine without her.

 _See, Clarke?_ He thinks almost vindictively. _I don’t need you as much as you didn’t need me._ It’s not right, and it’s not healthy and above all, it’s not fair to Clarke, but Clarke is gone, and the forty-four are here, and they rely on him just as much as they have always done.

Besides, his anger is always tempered and softened by the emptiness of missing her, the way his body instinctively craves her presence. Every day she’s gone, another piece of him dies, and it terrifies him what will happen when there’s nothing of him left. He feels off balance without her at his side, and his mind won’t let him forget her whispered words – _I need you_ – she’s still the angel that absolved him of all his guilt, gave him the belief that it was never too late for redemption, and as long as he remembers that, he can never truly hate her.

 

::

 

That summer is the summer that they truly flourish as a community. They’ve survived a year on the Ground, and they start focussing less on surviving and more on living. Bellamy is in charge of building cabins, and he plans to have every single person in a cabin before their third winter.

 “Are you sure that’s not too ambitious?” asks Miller cautiously, when Bellamy recruits him as his advisor on the project. He studies the diagrams and plans laid out on Bellamy’s rickety, makeshift table in his shoddy tent. “That’s a lot of cabins to build.”

Bellamy nods confidently.

“We can do it, I know we can.” Throwing himself so single-mindedly into organising the chopping of trees, and sawing planks and constructing the huts allows him to focus on something other than Clarke. There are obstacles to overcome in every part of his plan, and he relishes the challenge of something as simple and uncomplicated as a building project. An added bonus is that he is so tired that when he falls into bed at night, he almost forgets the prices they’d had to pay to get this far, almost forgets that their society is built on the corpses of the dead, both allies and enemies. He almost forgets the nightmares that haunt him.

 

::

 

It’s almost September when a Grounder negotiation party arrives at the gates of the Camp.

“We have to at least hear them out, a trade agreement would be very useful to us,” Kane argues, though his words lack enthusiasm. The wounds of Lexa’s betrayal have not healed so easily. Bellamy opposes Kane’s proposal strongly, the memories of the trials they had to endure all too fresh in his minds, but the rest of the Council grudgingly agrees that they cannot sabotage their future because of the past. Monty is on the fence, fretting about the pros and cons of each, but unable to come to a conclusion. Nevertheless, the balance of favour is for a trade agreement to be reached and Bellamy is soundly outvoted

Bellamy sulks furiously behind the scrap metal pile while the negotiations proceed, unable to force himself to attend, when Echo appears by his side and stares out in the distance with him.

“What my people did to yours was wrong, and we are here to apologise for our past mistakes.” she says eventually. He just clenches his jaw. “I hope to be friends, warrior of the Sky.” She turns to him, “I do not easily forget a debt. You are a good man, Bellamy Blake.”

“Why are you here, Echo?” he asks. “What could we possibly do for you that would cause you to come back and beg our forgiveness?”

Echo’s eyes turn distant and she sighs.

“Rumours of a plague have reached our ears. We would be grateful for your advanced medical knowledge.”

“So you’re using us? Again? Will it end like the last time we helped you?” He wasn’t angry, just bone weary of the responsibilities he carried on his shoulders. Not for the first time, he wanted Clarke with him to help him with the chaos swirling inside his mind. Was he being too paranoid about the Grounders? Was his feeling of dread just his mistrust or an omen of things to come? Should he have listened to his instincts and fought harder against the Council? What would happen if he was right and all of the Arker’s perished because he gave up? _Clarke, I need you,_ he thought desperately.

Monty was useless in situations like these. _I don’t know,_ he’d say helplessly, and shrug his shoulders, acknowledging his uselessness in defeat. Clarke would know, Clarke had a leader’s instinct, just like he did.

“You carry a heavy burden, Bellamy of the Sky,” Echo’s murmur jolted him back to reality and he stiffened, unwilling to let his defences down.

“I do what I have to do.” He replied gruffly and she smiles sadly.

“I have heard stories about the one you call Clarke.”

It only now occurs to him that he hasn’t heard her name aloud for a long, long time; only now realises that his friends have tactfully not brought her up in conversation.

“I have heard she is no longer with you. My people speak of you as a once fearsome team –“

“Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” Bellamy explodes. “You don’t know shit about her, or me! Don’t talk about her!” All of a sudden he’s too tired to stand and he falls onto the ground and puts his face in his hands. “Please just leave,” he mumbles to her. She ignores his plea.

“Some clans believe that in death, the soul fractures and scatters towards all the people they were closest to. Those pieces of soul becomes like a guardian angel, watching and protecting. You are not as alone as you think you are.” Bellamy doesn’t look up from his palms, and doesn’t hear her leave.

They grow closer in the weeks that follow, despite Bellamy’s best efforts. Echo always seems to be there like a shadow in the corner of his eye and after a while, he finds he doesn’t mind her presence.

She’s a strong, steady presence and seems to find silence more profound than words. It’s a different sort of companionship than he gets from the Arkers, but he finds he values it just the same.

 

 

He’s been taking on extra Guard shifts, which he knows is a bad idea, so it doesn’t exactly surprise him when he’s shaken awake from another nightmare, sweating and shaking even though the night is freezing.

Echo stares down at him almost compassionately and offers him a sip of her waterskin. He holds out a hand to take it but his limbs are trembling too violently, from the cold or his nightmare, he’s not sure which.

“Do you dream about the cages?” she whispers quietly, looking at the dust. He eyes her sharply, noting the defeated line of her shoulders, the uncharacteristic vulnerability in the clench of her fists.

“Yeah.” His voice is hoarse and it occurs to him that he’s been yelling in his dreams more than usual tonight.

“I ,too, have dreams about it.” She meets his eyes and swallows. “It was never death that scared me. It was what they did before.”

Bellamy nods, remembering being hosed down with scalding water that choked him even as he gasped for air. The scraping roughness of the metal bristles as they brushed him down. The heavy, chafing chains around his neck and wrists and ankles, the phantom weight of which he can still feel in those brief moments between wakefulness and sleep.

“Those nightmares I have, to me they are a reminder of what I have survived. A reminder of what I can endure and emerge from stronger than before.” Her voice is fierce and cold, her eyes glinting in the starlight. She glows silver, radiating ice and power. Where Clarke is glowing sunshine and steel, she is stone, cold and unbreakable. She is beautiful.

 It almost scares him, just how easily he could love her. Her cool strength and marble constancy. The way she views him as neither a criminal nor a king, not a hero nor a monster nor a broken soldier. She saw him as he was; just a man struggling under the weight of life, and the cost he’d paid to keep it.

When he kisses her, he’s not thinking about Clarke, or piles of bodies or metal bars. She doesn’t even hesitate before her lips slide against his own, firm and warm and soft.

Later, in the early mist of dawn, their bodies tangled together for warmth, she presses her mouth to his collarbone.

“I would ask you to come with me, if you did not have the duties you do.” Bellamy closes his eyes and imagines leaving his people, his family. They would not begrudge him of this, he knows. He would go with Echo and build a life with her far away, in one of the Lake clans she speaks so fondly of. He can see himself there with her, with a family. He’s known her barely two weeks and yet it’s so easy to imagine the life she’s offering that he’s tempted to agree. But his duties come first.

“Stay here, instead. I don’t want to lose you too.” He pleads.

She props herself up on her elbows, hair cascading down her shoulders and smiles sadly.

“You have too many ghosts here, Bellamy. They would drive us apart.” He nods at the truth of her words; her use of only his first name forming a pang in his chest, reminding him of what he will soon lose.

He remembers the afternoon he explained to her how names worked on the Ark; that Bellamy Blake was his first and last name, Bellamy being his given name and Blake being like his clan name.

When she leaves, his life seems impossibly emptier than before.

 

::

 

 “Bellamy, I’m worried about you,” Octavia touches his shoulder gently and he rolls his eyes. “Don’t be like that, Bell. You’re not sleeping enough, you’re not eating enough. All you do is work on those huts and do even more guard shifts, you need to take a break.” She insists.

He merely grunts and shakes his head.

“You miss her; Clarke. Don’t you?” she whispers to him in the fading twilight, the words carried on the wind, burrowing into his skin and drilling a cavity into his heart. He tries to breathe through the pain, but finding his breath is becoming more and more difficult and these nights he goes to bed gasping for breath and waking up just as oxygen starved as the night before.

“We all miss her, Octavia.” His voice is sharper than he would have liked and once upon a time, when Octavia was younger, innocent and wide-eyed, she would have recoiled, but not now. Not ever again. Instead, the metal glows in her eyes and she clenches her jaw.

“She left you, Bellamy,” she says bluntly, anger colouring her words. “She left you here by yourself to do this on your own. She obviously didn’t feel the same way. If she did, she would never have gone.” Bellamy’s hackles rise and he rushes to defend her, not even taking a moment to acknowledge that only a year or so ago, there was only one girl in the universe who he would ever care to defend. He misses the irony that the same girl is standing right in front of him while he pleads the case of another.

“She needed it, O. She’s not –“ like me, he wants to finish. She can’t go on when her soul is crushed and broken just like her armour. She can’t go on when the crown that once sat proud upon her golden head slipped around her neck, choking her, becoming, finally, a shackle.

“She’s had to do terrible things, O. She needed to go to heal and come to terms with it. She did what she had to do. She would have come back.” As he utters these last words, his lack of faith in them astounds him, but then he remembers the distance in her eyes, the fact that although she was in his arms, lips pressed to his neck, she had never been further away. He wills Octavia to understand, wills her to forgive Clarke for the sacrifices and bad decisions she’s had to make. “She – she,” his voice is hoarse. “She’s just a girl, Octavia. People tend to forget that.”

Octavia huffs, and he tries to ignore a realization that only just came to light. _What if she never meant to come back at all?_ An insidious voice inside his head whispers. _What if her plan all along was to die? What if, not only were you not enough for her to stay at Camp, you weren’t even enough for her to stay at all?_ Remembering how she was alight with darkness the last time he saw her, it suddenly seems like an all too real possibility. He furrows his brow, driving out his demons, and Octavia interrupts the treacherous thoughts that are beginning to drive out fond memories of two broken fighters staring into the cosmos, searching for absolution.

“She’d gone through just about as much as anyone else here. You made the same decision she did in the Mountain, you both killed the Mountain Men.” Bellamy winces at her bluntness but Octavia continues. “She left to deal with it the only way she could, and now she’s dead because of it. But you have to let go. You can’t keep pining after her. She sent you to die, remember? You don’t mean as much to her as she does to you.” Her voice softens and he lays a gentle, loving hand on his tense arm. “I just don’t want to see you in pain anymore. She’s dead, and she didn’t stay. Not even for you.” She searches his eyes for moment, then, in a now uncharacteristic display of affection, kisses his cheek softly.

He’s left clenching his jaw, trying to dispel the feeling that Octavia’s words created within him, her words, her truths running their cold fingers down the walls of his ribcage, ringing true with every passing moment. _I need you_ , she had said. And then, _It’s worth the risk,_ she had declared, her eyes veiled behind the wall of ice she had managed to erect almost overnight. Octavia’s harsh words plucked at his heartstrings with alarming force.

Because these are the thoughts he’d tried so hard to smother as he lay in his cot, staring up and the grimy canvas of his tent, imagining two stormy blue eyes instead of the tears and patches that made up his humble abode. He is lost in thought for a time, but five minutes have barely passed and Octavia is back.

“I’m sorry,” she says contritely. “That was harsh of me. I just hate seeing you this way.” Bellamy’s jaw works and he musters up a fake smile from the darkness swirling in his stomach, all the while wondering when his baby sister had grown up so fast. “You’re working yourself to death, and it’s clear to anyone who cares that you’re distracting yourself from her.”

“I’m fine, O. I just need to get these done, that’s all. No one wants to live in tents for more winters than necessary. Two winters will be bad enough. I just want to get these done before third winter.”

“You’ve already done the mess hall.” It was the first thing to be constructed, in what will eventually be the centre of the camp, a cabin large enough for almost all to fit in, complete with long tables. The numerous stools will take more time, but he’s not worried about that. “And the infirmary is almost finished. You can take it easy, you know.”

“I will, when we’ve finished the infirmary.” He promises, and the lie tastes only slightly bitter on his tongue. Despite every intention not to, he had built the infirmary with what Clarke would have wanted firmly in his head, with numerous cupboards for her OCD level of organisation, and four distinct sections; one for long term patients, one for short term patients, one for light checkups and one for heavier surgical tasks. He’s not happy with it, always finding little ways to improve it, but Abby and Jackson are happy with and that is all that matters.

It doesn’t matter that Clarke wouldn’t approve of the sharp edges on one of the bedframes, or the fact that one of the drawers doesn’t close properly, because Octavia is right, Clarke is gone and she didn’t care for him like he did her, and she left him to deal with their mess all on his own, and she never even thought about what it would do to the people she left behind when she died. The sky lightens all of a sudden, the sun’s rays just peeking over the horizon. His face is bathed in golden light. A new dawn. Another day without Clarke. The last crumbling piece of his soul dissolves into ash. There is nothing of him left. Nothing but anger.

 

 ::

 

Its midwinter, and everyone’s spirits are low, including his. They’re two cabins behind schedule, and the cold seems worse than last year, and they’re all so damp, all of the time. The morale is non-existent to say the least, the people are miserable, hungry and ill, and everyone’s temper is short. Bellamy emerges from another fruitless Council meeting and huddles deeper into his fur, trudging through the sludgey snow, now more brown that white and leans his head on the metal fence that lines the perimeter. If Clarke were here, it’d be so much easier. Abby and Jackson would be less overwhelmed in the medical bay, he wouldn’t be so bone weary. Everyone would be less on edge, if the Princess was around, he thinks bitterly. _Clarke_ , he thinks, and the familiar, bitter sting of angry pain flares in his chest again. _Why did you leave us, leave me?_ He thinks to the looming forest before him. A sharp sound jerks him out of this thoughts, Wick yells out to him, gesticulating wildly. Bellamy is on his feet within seconds and sprint to where Wick stands outside Raven’s tent.

“What is it?” he demands, “What’s wrong?”

“Just come inside.” Wick is beaming, and the thundering of his heart calms when he realises that it’s not bad news.

Raven is laughing gleefully, as she makes adjustments to a drawing, but she looks up when she hears them come in.

“Happy birthday!” she cries, shoving the papers into his chest.

“It’s not… my birthday?” he glances at her in confusion, then turns his gaze to her carefully drawn plans.

“Is this –“ he frowns and then his eyes widen. “A water system?” he asks in amazement.

Raven crows in victory.

“We did it! Wick and I did it!”

A grin splits his face in two.

“You guys are amazing! How come you never told me you were working on this?”

“We weren’t sure it was going to work.” Wick answers him, but Raven turns her glare on him.

“No, _you_ weren’t sure it was going to work.” She snaps at him, but there’s no bite to her voice, and the smirk takes any edge off her words. Bellamy doesn’t even have to squint to see the fondness shining in her eyes when she looks at Wick. “And we’re also working on a sewage system too.” She tells him.

When he tells Octavia, she reverts back to a child again, spinning around in delight. The juxtaposition of her black warpaint and weaponry, along with her childish giggles and twirls brings a genuine smile to Bellamy’s face.

“Showers.” She laughs gleefully. “We’re going to have _showers_.”

“And taps and toilets.” He reminds her.

She glances at him.

“It’s working.” She says softly. “It’s finally becoming home.” A warm flame alights in his chest, and he pulls her to his chest.

It’s seems unlikely that the mere prospect of a shower would be the biggest factor into raising everyone’s spirits, but that night, unlike most others, they all congregate around the campfire, drinking moonshine and laughing together again. It’s like they’re oblivious to the cold and the damp, _just because of a few damn showers_ , Bellamy thinks in amused exasperation.

“Do you reckon we can get heated water for the showers?” Harper muses, staring longingly into the depths of the fire. “Can you imagine that?” She asks.

People nod in assent, and look to Raven who’s staring at Wick contemplatively. He chews his lip.

“If we had a water tank of metal…” he thinks out loud.

“A fire?” Raven suggests and he nods slowly.

“We couldn’t have hot ones that often, it will take a long time to warm up –“

“But it will be so worth it,” interrupts Jasper with an exaggerated moan, and Bellamy is glad that Jasper is involving himself again. Jasper meets his eyes, and the smile vanishes, and it’s clear to see that there’s still some way to go yet.

He takes a step back into the shadows, and observes what their community has become. Most of them are like family, now, and although there is a clear divide between the Delinquents and the Arkers, most people get along well now. Their society is finally coming together. He watches Octavia huddle next to Lincoln and resists the urge to frown. He likes Lincoln; he’d just like him better if he weren’t dating Octavia, but when he sees the glimmer of happiness shining in her eyes, he can’t help but smile proudly.

Monty appears next to him.

“Look how far we’ve come,” he whispers into the dark, marvelling at the sheer exuberant, unlikely fact of their existence. Bellamy nods in agreement. He turns to the silhouettes and frames of the cabins in the half completed village.

“Look how far we still have to go,” he counters, but it’s confident, not grim and Monty smiles in contentment.

This is it, Bellamy thinks. Finally. He would be happy, if it weren’t for the stinging pull of his heart, yearning for Clarke, yearning for her reassuring presence next to him, yearning for her support and input. He would be fine, if he could only forget the gaping hole in his heart that he’d tried to fix by filling it with bitterness and rage.

 

::

 

It’s late October when it finally happens. It’s an unexpectedly hot day, and the construction work is less building and more polishing up what’s already there, ironing out the kinks in the works. Some of the piping in the toilet block sprung a leak, and Bellamy was up until the early hours of the morning trying to fix it by torchlight. He’s tired and sweaty, and slightly grumpy, and sawing off a branch twenty feet up in a tree while trying not to fall out, so he’s not paying attention to the surroundings, and it takes him a couple of moments to realise that everyone has fallen dead silent.

He glances around, and follows everyone’s gaze. There, in plain sight in the middle of the Camp stands a very familiar gold headed figure. His heart jumps in his chest, frantically kicking about and he swallows against the multitude of feelings that threatens to overwhelm it _. It’s not possible_ , he thinks _. It can’t be._

Abby envelopes her into a bone crushing embrace and people begin whispering disbelievingly. Bellamy crouches, frozen in the tree, unable to tear his eyes away from the person he’d pretended he no longer liked. She’s frighteningly skinny and pale; she’s limping and holds her shoulder at an odd angle, but she’s alive and she looks around, and despite the distance between them, it feels to him like she’s meeting his eyes.

 _Clarke,_ he thinks wondrously, and it’s like the clouds have parted and the golden sunlight shines down upon him once more, warming his soul. He swings down from the tree so fast he begins to feel light headed (or is that just the fact that Clarke is back?)  _Clarke._ His body and mind aren’t processing her presence in the same way, his arms aching to hold her, press her close and feel her body, alive and well, against his own. His mind is spinning, oscillating between joy and bewilderment, because _she’s not dead, she’s not dead, she’s alive and not dead._ But underneath it all, a creeping sense of darkness, thick and viscous swallows all other emotion. _Two years and not a single whisper from her_ , he thinks darkly. The demons inside him stir to life and whisper an endless mantra at him; selfish, selfish, selfish, they say.

Now she’s closer, he can see the blinding but oh-so-hesitant smile on her face, and that does it for him. How dare she swan back into the camp after two fucking years like nothing has changed, like she deserves to be here, like she hadn’t broken his heart. Anger, sharp and black, rises in his throat. She reaches him, he can see her mouth open, and beats her to it.

“Back so soon, Princess?” his voice is bitter and mocking, so reminiscent of that invincible anti-hero from the beginning of their story. An echo of those first days on the ground. His words, his tone, the nickname that went from mocking to fond and now back to mocking again; they hurt her, he can see it in her eyes; the rejection, the pain. Good, he thinks, let her hurt, she fucking deserves it. He pushes past her without a backward glance, rage tainting his every step. He’s still holding the saw, and tosses it to the ground without sparing it a second glance.

It might just be his imagination, but he can feel her eyes burning into his back.

 

::

 

Clarke watches him walk away, heart pounding unsteadily in her ribcage. She had missed him, her partner; her friend; her confidant and advisor; her co-leader, the rebel king, so brash and loud to distract people from his vulnerabilities, the fear sparking under his skin; deep down, his childlike spark of hope, smothered by so many years of hardship and pain and loss, but never, ever extinguished, even through all these long months, terrible actions and heart-breaking decisions on the ground.

The moment she’d seen him again, after two long years, she couldn’t repress the starlit smile that twisted her lips into an unfamiliar shape. Two years, and they had been kind to him – or, at least, kinder than the first few months on the ground. Two years and the indentation between his brows has smoothed, his shoulders were more relaxed, his movement freer and less tight. He wiped the sweat off his brow and tilted his face to the sun, soaking in the rays, and in that moment, the realization that she loved that man hit her over the head like the butt of a gun. She loved him, she was in love with him.

Somewhere along the way, in between enraged arguments and bitter disagreements; in between saving each other again and again, both physically and emotionally dragging each other from the brink of despair, the brink of death; in between the sacrifice, the sharp sting of loss and the pain; in between the fleeting looks exchanged like fireflies in the twilight, she had fallen in love with him. Two years and she had only just realised it.

Two years and their friendship had twisted into something ugly and resentful. Two years and maybe now she was only just beginning to see that what she had gained in terms of inner peace and acceptance was worth less to her than the things she had failed to see right in front of her; the offer and promise of arms to hold her as she stumbled, hands to pull her back up again when she fell, lips to reassure her when she cried.

Clarke turned away from his retreating figure and faced her mother once again. Her lips were pursed but her mouth remained shut.

“I’m so glad you’re home, honey.” She says eventually.

“Yeah, me too.” But her words sound flat to her own ears, and it occurs to her that she’s not home yet, not really. Home has never been this settlement. When she thinks of home, she does not think of metal edges, steel piping and airlocked doors, she doesn’t even think of cozy wooden cabins; she thinks of warm brown eyes, smirking lips, a beating heart full to brim of rage and love and passion, hands capable of both killing and saving.

She remembers Bellamy’s harsh words and cold eyes and blinks against the prickle behind her eyes. She wonders if she’ll feel this homeless forever.

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: titles from Shakespeare's Hamlet; more specifically, Hamlet's To Be or Not To Be soliloquy.
> 
> my egomaniacal soul thrives off compliments. leave me one in the comments!~ (or just leave constructive criticism, either is fine)


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